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What's this?My wife and I were antiquing on the Connecticut shore when we came upon a dusty, bound copy of six months of the Bridgeport Evening Standard, a precursor and one-time competitor of the Bridgeport Post. The front cover was missing and the first issue was July 5, 1866 — 10 years before the nation's centennial. Carefully turning the page, we came upon a column labeled "Local Matters." The first news item read "THE FOURTH." Go back there with me when the weather was "glorious" and the day "was observed in this city by the display of flags, the usual ringing of the bells, firing of small cannon, pistols, torpedoes, squibs, crackers &c."
Further down the column, readers learned of an unnamed and unfortunate son of one Henry Hall, who "touched a match to about a quarter of a pound of powder and in consequence had his face and hair burnt and his eyes quite badly injured."
The Evening Standard was owned by John Dutton Candee, a Yale Law School graduate who, according to one 19th century historian, was a man determined "to avoid certain errors of journalism" and pursued "a line of general progress for the public good" in a "moral and intelligent community."
Maybe not everybody in town. The paper also reported how on the Fourth "there were a considerable number of drunken men's rows which the police promptly suppressed."
On the same
A few paragraphs away, The Standard alerted the mayor and the police of young men making "a daily practice to go in swimming along the docks.
"Common decency demands that a stop be put to it at once." Its coverage of the 4th of July continued with how the "pleasant little steamers" the Alice Preston and Ella "carried over many parties to Charles Island.
"Crowds wandered around the grounds, the dancing pavilion and the bowling allies ... while the seats under the cherry trees offered a delicious opportunity of enjoying the sea breeze and to pass off the day in a delightful manner."
Mr. Candee was a self-made man who at the age of 9 left his widowed mother in New Haven and walked to his uncle's farm in Oxford, where he worked for three years. After Yale, he became a prosecutor in New Haven, but according to our historian, Samuel Orcutt, "the profession of law secured satisfactory remuneration, yet by his peculiar sensitiveness and personal taste, he did not like it." He got a job at the New Haven Journal and Courier and found "that occupation congenial." He purchased the Bridgeport Standard, a small paper in a "very precarious condition" which he grew into a "great success."
Candee's paper was four pages and selling for four cents. Then along comes George Washington Hills.
Several businessmen of East Bridgeport had been urging Mr. Hills half in jest to come out with a daily one-cent paper. And so 125 years ago, on Feb. 7, 1883, was born The Daily Post as a small, four-column sheet. Within a year it was seven "handsomely printed" columns "exactly the same size as the New York Sun."
Mr. Hills introduced his new paper with the message that the penny price "places it within reach of all, so that no family need be without their daily paper." He promised that in politics the Post "will be independent ... and will not fail to condemn in the most emphatic manner, the methods of those politicians who, merely seeking their own gain, are not above attaining their ends by fraud."
Mr. Orcutt wrote histories of Bridgeport, Stratford, Derby, New Milford and other Connecticut communities. He wrote that Hills' Daily Post "received a hearty welcome from the public," and "the profits of the paper were steadily devoted to its improvement."
Today we celebrate 125 years of journalism by the Connecticut Post with 32 pages filled with history we think you'll find fascinating. Enjoy. James H. Smith is the editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6325 or by e-mail at jsmith@ctpost.com.
